NEW YORK \u2014 The NYPD will soon have the power to disable and take out rogue drones \u2014 and will be sending more cops to the Bronx, which was responsible for a third of the city\u2019s shootings in 2025, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The White House is expected to give the NYPD the authority to take out unauthorized drones found buzzing around major events, Tisch said during her 2026 \u201cState of the NYPD\u201d address at Cipriani\u2019s in Midtown.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there\u2019s one threat that keeps me up at night, it\u2019s drones,\u201d Tisch said. \u201cTactics that once belonged to militaries are now increasingly accessible to smaller groups and individuals. And commercial drones can be easily adapted into weapons of war.\u201d<\/p>\n
The approval comes as the city hosts several FIFA World Cup events this year, as well as marks the 25th anniversary of 9\/11 and the 250th birthday of the U.S., she noted.<\/p>\n
As the department waits for final approval, the NYPD will continue to invest millions of dollars in mitigation equipment and train officers how to use it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe plan to be ready to commence drone mitigation operations as soon as we are legally allowed to do so,\u201d Tisch said.<\/p>\n
The nation\u2019s largest police department, which can detect drones and has numerous drones of its own, has for several years backed proposed legislation that would allow it to electronically jam and disable drones seen as threats to public safety.<\/p>\n
Currently, only federal agencies have the authority to take down a drone electronically. While hosting large events like last year\u2019s 4th of July fireworks celebration, the FBI had to be on hand to work alongside local police to keep an eye out for suspicious drones.<\/p>\n
Tisch noted last year that \u201cthings come up all the time in New York City \u2026 every day, and so we really need to be able to be nimble and have the authority to do drone mitigation ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we\u2019ve seen in Ukraine, the Middle East and even along our border the threats posed by weaponized drones is real and growing,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the NYPD will be bringing an additional 200 officers to the Bronx as the department plans to divide it into two patrol boroughs.<\/p>\n
The Bronx has always had just one patrol borough, while Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan have two.<\/p>\n
\u201cBronx residents have raised this issue for years,\u201d Tisch said. \u201cThey\u2019re not asking for special treatment. They\u2019re asking a reasonable question about fairness and capacity: why does a borough this large still operate under a structure that wouldn\u2019t be acceptable elsewhere in the city? And they\u2019re right to expect better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beginning this spring, the department will divide the patrol borough in half \u2014 Bronx North and Bronx South \u2014 which she said will strengthen the NYPD\u2019s ability to respond to emergencies and bring additional units, including homicide squads and narcotics and evidence collection teams, to the borough.<\/p>\n
Last year, more than a third of the city\u2019s shootings were in the Bronx, three times as many as in Queens and Manhattan, Tisch said. Nearly one million emergency calls came from the Bronx last year \u2014 more than Queens and equal to Manhattan.<\/p>\n
Once the Bronx is divided, Staten Island will be the only borough with one patrol unit protecting it.<\/p>\n
Tisch\u2019s address comes as the NYPD experienced one of they city\u2019s safest years on record with the fewest shooting incidents since the beginning of the CompStat era in 1994.<\/p>\n
\u201cTogether, we have cleared away the rubble of crisis and we say with renewed certainty that the State of the NYPD is strong,\u201d Tisch told members of the Police Foundation, which sponsored the breakfast. Mayor Zohran Mamdani was also in attendance.<\/p>\n
\u201cA year ago, I set clear expectations for the NYPD. New Yorkers deserved a police department that was stable in its leadership, disciplined in its operations, serious about its standards, and focused relentlessly on public safety,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2026, that doesn\u2019t change. Our crime fighting posture remains the same, the standards we hold ourselves to remain the same, and the commitment to support the noble men and women of the NYPD remains absolute.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2025, NYPD investigations led to more than 100 arrests connected to foreign terrorist organizations, domestic extremists, lone actors, and other serious threats, Tisch said. Those arrests spanned eight foreign countries and nine U.S. states.<\/p>\n
Other plans for the new year include a significant overhaul of officers\u2019 in-service training that will cover a wide range of topics including tactics, de-escalation tips and lessons on legal standards and constitutional policing.<\/p>\n
The NYPD also plans to roll out a new 311 dispatch system in which cops will be able to better track, respond to and close out quality-of-life offenses, digitize its precinct command logs and introduce an upgraded Domain Awareness System, known as DAS 2.0, which will bring real-time awareness directly to cops in the field.<\/p>\n
Through this upgraded system, cops would be told if a stolen car passed a license plate reader ahead of them and cops can watch live drone footage at a scene as they reach the emergency, Tisch said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 The NYPD will soon have the power to disable and take out rogue drones \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,55688,7426,5302,9,24,63,103,25805,129,131,130,55689],"class_list":{"0":"post-129356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-commercial-drones","10":"tag-cops","11":"tag-jessica-tisch","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-nypd","16":"tag-police-commissioner","17":"tag-the-bronx","18":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","19":"tag-the-bronx-news","20":"tag-weaponized-drones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}